August 21, 2010

My Tutor Friend: Teacher's Pet Is Also Her Pretty Boy Peer

My Little Bride. My Mighty Princess. My Sassy Girl. You'll find no scant supply of possessively titled rom-coms in the K-pop movie canon. So consider Kim Kyeong-hyeong's My Tutor Friend part of a tried-and-true tradition. Here's how the films work: On one side, you've got a bossy, egocentric rebel. In this case, it's Ji-hoon (Kwone Sang-woo), a dreamy flunky who's too busy primping and punching to pass 11th grade despite his 21 years. On the other side, you've got a self-effacing brat who'll act as his unknowing mentor and unlikely love interest. For this installment, her name is Su-wan (Kim Ho-neul) and she's got a thing or two to teach that young man about respect, verb conjugation, and idiomatic expressions in the English language. Rich boy, poor girl. Cool kid, square chick. Once these two learn to deal with his catty girlfriend (Kim Ji-woo), the school bully (Kong Yu) and the local gang, they'll drive off into the sunset on his motorcycle. But there's mayhem and misfires until then plus an improbably erotic scene in which she bandages the knife wound on his six pack abs as if they were making love and another queerly sexy moment in which he licks the blood off her paper-cut finger. Why kiss when you can nurse each other's wounds?